Category: General

Every business plan has a financial projections section. The business plan financial projections generate most interest because they show where your business is now and where you think your business will be from a financial perspective.

All other sections in your business plan flow into the assumptions that support your financial projections. For this reason financiers are very interested in this section and as a result it tends to strike fear into most business owners.

How to do Business Plan Financial Projections

Business plan financial projections should outline the historical performance (if any) and outline the assumptions that you have used to forecast business earnings in the future. The key financial statements required to present the business plan financial projections are:

Income Statement (Profit & Loss)

Balance Sheet (What the business owns and owes)

Cash Flow Statement (Cash flow in the business and how it is used)

When considering your business plan financial projections you should focus on these three documents when forecasting, especially if you are trying to attract funding. This is because each financial document in the business plan financial projections tells the investor something about your business.

These documents naturally impact each other so it is essential that your projections do not solely focus on sales and costs. You must also show the capital structure of your business as it grows (balance sheet) and also the cash flow in your business (cash flow statement). This is accomplished by producing forecasts using an integrated financial model. If the forecasts don’t talk to each other they are useless to an investor. My advice, to hire a professional essay writer australia for this target.

The Importance Of Reasonable Financial Assumptions

Sound financial assumptions are pivotal to business plan financial projections. Here is a list of the top 3 mistakes made by entrepreneurs in the business plan financial projections section. See our next post to find out about the mistakes.

If you are seeking a grant to develop your business – then it’s a government grants officer who will be reading your business proposal. They will want to know whether your business fits the criteria of the grant on offer. Each grant is different, so you need to research the grant you are applying for and address the criteria in your business plan.

An example might be that your business must create employment in your local area in order to receive a grant. You would then place emphasis on this point in your business plan and outline how this will occur.

So, to achieve a winning business plan when applying for a government grant, highlight that your business meets the grant criteria in your business plan.

#3 How to write a business proposal for Equity investment

If you are after an equity injection – then the equity investor will be reading it, and you want their investable funds. Equity investors are typically interested in high growth or “first mover” advantage industries such as technology, media or entertainment. If this is your business, then focus on the high profit and return potential for the investment. A return on their investment of at least 30% is attractive.

They will also want a clear exit strategy, so you need to make it clear in your business plan when and how they will be repaid. Perhaps you intend to merge with another company, or conduct a management buyout, or conduct an IPO. Equity investors will typically want to see an exit strategy within 3 to 7 years of their initial investment.

So, highlight these factors for a winning equity business plan.

How to write a business proposal to achieve your goals

Each of these examples requires a different angle for your business proposal. For you to have a winning business plan, you need to tell your audience what they want to hear. Because at the end of the day, what makes your business plan a winner is whether it achieves the goals you want out of it.

Knowing and demonstrating an understanding of the businesses’ market and market share instantly buys credibility with investors. Knowing the information by heart provides strong evidence that the business owner knows the market intimately and can make logical and reasonable assessments about potential business opportunities.

Be Able To Discuss Financial Data In Detail From Memory

It is not enough just to know the qualitative aspects of the business. This is the mistake business owners often make when doing a business plan presentation. Knowing the financial detail intimately provides great comfort to potential investors that the business owner is business minded and not just passionate about a product. Being able to share this information in an unscripted way during the business plan presentation provides significant credibility to the funding application.

One Business Plan Presentation Can Significantly Impact Your Success At Obtaining Funding

Even good businesses miss out on investment opportunities by lacking preparation, forgetting important information, and losing credibility during the business plan presentation for these reasons. First impressions count, and making a business plan presentation using power-point, and memorizing key important facts about the business will enhance the credibility of a funding application greatly.

Have Fun!

A business plan presentation may not seem like the appropriate forum for having fun but if you can get excited about what you are presenting it can be. Following the simple advice above will make you feel more prepared and comfortable which will naturally lead to you feeling excited about the event rather than scared.

The best business plan presentations are delivered with confidence and with ease. This shines through very clearly to the audience and in many ways is the most powerful weapon you have at your disposal. Remember that you are presenting to the audience and in most cases audiences naturally want the presenter to succeed. It is part of the human condition. If you give the audience no reason to doubt you then you are more than halfway to reaching your goal.

If you are driving, determine parking locations and cost. If taking the bus, get clear on the route, where you will board and have the right bus fare with you for both legs of the trip.

Prepare your information for the interview with the company’s environment in mind. For example, if you research the job and learn the company is strong on customer service, highlight your customer service-related skills. Or if you find that the company conducts several “mystery shops” a year, focus on your results in this area.

Try to “match and mirror” the person interviewing you in terms of body language, vocal tone, etc. People like people like themselves. This doesn’t mean be phoney, just aware of your surroundings.

Listen carefully to everything said to insure you are addressing what they are really asking. Ask for clarification, if necessary.

Speak clearly and confidently. Talk conversationally.

Take part in the interview. Be an active, enthusiastic participant — which also illustrates that you would be a good addition to the company. Ask key questions (see below).

Talk about your skills, but don’t just repeat your resume. Offer stories that illustrate your accomplishments. Show that you can think on your feet.

Don’t respond negatively to a question. This includes any comments about a former employer. If you haven’t done something requested, mention what you’ve done that is similar in scope or skills required. Remember this axiom: negative stops; positive persuades. If you must speak about the former employer, do so factually, without extraneous story or drama.

Be sure to mention that you are interested in the position and how you can help the company.

Ask about the next steps following the interview. You need to know what to expect in the days/weeks ahead.

Try to maintain your peace of mind. Relax and enjoy the process.

After the Interview

Congratulate yourself for giving it your best.

Take yourself out to lunch or dinner.

Write a note (handwritten preferred, but at least e-mail) expressing your appreciation for the opportunity to interview and how you believe you can do a great job for the company.

Questions

Asking questions during the interview illustrates your confidence and professionalism. You don’t just want this job, you want a job that suits you. Ask questions to make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

Is this a new position? If not, what didn’t work well with the last person who held it? What could be done differently?

What are the main objectives of this position? What is the most important one? The most time-critical one?

What problems would you face in this position? What staff would assist you? What other resources would you bring to bear?

What kind of budget would you have?

Who do you work for? How will your performance be measured?

What kind of autonomy would you have for developing new ideas, procedures, scheduling, etc.

What advancement opportunities are possible? After what length of time?

What has been the company’s biggest success? Why? How?

What are their plans for growing to the next level?

What changes lie on the horizon?

This looks like a lot of information to consider, but much of it boils down to commonsense. Treat your future employer like you would a friend or family member, and you’re that much closer to your first paycheck with that company.

Review your performance metrics and practice discussing numerous results you’ve accomplished. Results are a big factor in retail, so this is no time to wing it. Pull together your thoughts on results such as: performance; sales—numbers, and how you drove them; shrinkage results; employee turnover; recruitment efforts; expense control; how you went outside of the box to make your store better or increase your performance. Other topics include your:

Ability to manage payroll. This is an issue at all levels of retail. Obviously retailers work on a budget with set payroll hours that you have to work around, even if you think you need more. How do you cope with this thorny issue?

Have you tapped into some creative solutions?

Presentation skills. Delivering presentations and meetings to large groups of people happens often in retail.

Communication skills. Both written and verbal communications are important in retail.

Thoughts on the importance of diversity. What does diversity means to you? How does diversity helps drive business?

Record on safety and risk management. How did you contribute to promoting a safe working environment?

Ability to maintain inventory levels and inventory management in general.

Success with developing those who work for you. Did you promote people to the next level? How did you accomplish that? What kind of preparations were necessary?

Project management and completion. Show how you can set a plan and follow it through.

Leadership skills. Retail store managers and executives are leaders and have to be great leaders to achieve great results.

Reasons for seeking a new job. This may be similar for every position, but in most retail situations you should be looking for a new job to take your career to the next level, take on more responsibility, etc.

Problem solving skills. In retail, you need to be self-motivated and be able to solve problems with little or no guidance.

One-year plan? Five-year plan? What would your Day One On the Job look like? What goals do you hope to accomplish? In what timeframe?

Day Before

Get your clothes in order. Dress in a way that your mother would approve of

Confirm time and location. Print—don’t try to memorize—a map from the Web. Estimated travel time and add a half hour.

Types of interviews to get a job have become more diversified the last years; now, we can take online interviews from anywhere, home, room even our office, without leaving the place where we are. In this sense, the traditional job interviews are gradually being forgotten by big companies and these are being changed by new forms of interviews like Skype Interviews, Video Interview inter alia. Also, each form of interviews has special questions that the applicant must answer with certain level of ability.

With the globalization, more and more companies want work with personal of different places of the continent, the executives are opened their mind in searching new talents not only inside their own countries, but also in abroad countries in order to increase the development of their companies. To do that, the internet is the best way to establish contact with applicants form different places of the world.

Tips to face an online interview

The online interview is very important by the companies and the interviewers. If you give a good first impression to interviewer at the beginning of the interview, you can consider an early achievement for your work aspiration. This main aspect can give you a key for next interviews in the process of personnel selection. In this way, we note some tips to face in a better form the online interview.

Choose adequately the place where you will face the interview, your room, your hall inter alia. These places have a good illumination and ventilation to be comfortable.

Other important characteristic of the place is the quiet and silence. If you have pets, children or noisy roommates, you have to get rid of them at least for a moment; you can leave the pet or child to care of a relative.

Clean well these areas or places, all things and objects that are behind you should be ordered and cleaned, because these things will appear in the screen at moment of online interview. We want the interviewer to know that we are neat and clean.

The formal dress is important, the webcam will focuses on your upper body, however, anybody never know when you will have to stand up, for this reason is important to wear formal trousers and shoes clean, too.

During the online interview, maybe you will have to take notes. Have paper and pencils close at hand is necessary.

Have a copy of your resume close at hand will help you to order your explanations of your skills.

Previously Practice; to avoid technical problems, video and sound, during the process of online interview.

During the interview, you have to pay attention to the interviewer looking the webcam all time; you can look the screen a couple of time but is recommendable look at the webcam.

Skype interview

Nowadays, the social networks are a great tool to establish family or business relationships and it is the most used implement by companies to make job interviews from one location to another. Most job interviews are made by Skype, the video social network most popular the last years. The advantage of online interviews is the commodity and the time. Generally, these online interviews are preferred by the applicants because they can take the interview from their homes and more comfortable places, in this way, the applicants are more relaxed to face the interviews and the interviewers had more liberty to develop their interviews.

However, to follow some rules before of take online interviews always are important and necessary; have a formal nickname, for example the real name of the applicant with the last name, is important, nicknames like “superkitty69” or “superfast” are a less point for the postulant. Other advice is remembered that you will take a job interview and not a conversation of friends, for this reason, you should dress formal, the fact of feel comfortable in home is not an impediment to dress adequately.

Also, this online interview could have some problems of video or audio, therefore is recommendable make a previous interview to review the system of audio and video of your computer.

Other important factor is the illumination; sometimes the image of the video is dim and dark because the place where you will take the job interview has low light, to put a lamp near to computer is advisable. The noise of the home is another important point, if you have child or pets in house, you can leave them with a family member or friend during the time of your online interview. Following these advices your job interview will passes in a better way.

For many people, interviews could result frightening and even a headache. Even so, recruiters thought about making the interview experience more difficult. That is why they want to mix it with a pleasant meal. It involves combining different facts such as listening to the interviewer while you are trying to show confidence and to give assertive responses, you will also need to pay special attention on how you ingest food. That is the main concept of having a lunch interview.

This kind of interviews could be during a lunch in the afternoon or during a dinner at night. The way of recruiting people during a meal has been increasing lately. We will mention some of the important aspects to consider for lunch interview.

You should consider applying all the table manners’ knowledge that you learned when you were a child because it will be useful for the interview. Now, you probably have forgotten most of table manners or acquired bad manners of your environment. It could happen with people that live in an informal setting and they were not being corrected when it was necessary. However, you should avoid bad habits on table and even more in front of the interviewer.

Here we have a small list of habits that you should show during a lunch interview:

Consider to take care of some bad habits like talking with a big portion of food on your mouth because it gives a bad impression. As well as putting your elbows on the table or chewing with your mouth open.

Be respectful, while you are answering some questions. Be polite using some expressions like “thank you” and “please”. Also, don’t forget to be courteous with waiters. All the time, the interviewer will be evaluating your personality.

Should you think you are confused about table manners, seek expert help. You could find different books related to “table manners”, do research about etiquette because that could be helpful for your interview.

Choose an appropriate dish

Most probably, you are accustomed to have a great meal; however, you will not feel free to choose a dish that you like. For an interview, you should show formality during having a meal.

There are no specific rules to select some food. Nevertheless, you could take these tips:

Do not choose smelly food. Avoid being remembered as the candidate with bad breath and stay away of garlic and onions.

Also, avoid crunchy food because it makes noise and your interviewer could not listen to you clearly.

Have a look at the interviewer because you could order the same number of courses and cost range to have an idea of what to order.

Ingest food and talk

Sometimes it could be difficult to talk and eat at the same time especially during an interview. Challenge yourself to do both properly.

You should try to follow the next advices:

Try not to feel the pressure of just talking and have not eaten anything. Your dish should not look like the beginning because it could mean that you are getting nervous.

During an interview, it is important to have questions in mind. So, when you have a lunch interview you will be able to ask questions about the company to the interviewer. It will also benefit you because while you are eating the interviewer is answering to your questions.

How it should end?

There is a little different than a standard interview. Not only you should end a meal interview with a handshake on, but also, you will need to consider the following aspects.

Don’t worry about the bill because you donĀ“t need to pay for any. The interviewer is the most indicated person to pay the bill. So, donĀ“t worry about that.

Put special emphasis on your interviewer and tell her or him about why you want to work for them.

It is recommendable that you shake hands firmly but not sharply and it should be accompanied of a “thank you”. In addition, you should be grateful with the interviewer for meeting with you and for having time for the interview. Also, be kind and say that you enjoyed the meal and the company.

Then, you could terminate the interview with a handshake. Also, in the morning it is important to monitor a thank you letter. A lunch interview could result complicated. You need to be self-confident and be positive. The tips and guidance that we provide you will be useful for you in this kind of interviews.

Reporter. Columnist. Public relations professional. Crisis communicator. Publications manager. Blogger. I’ve worn many hats, but they’ve all been cut from the same piece of felt. The common element that has linked all endeavors in my professional life is a desire to write. In sixth grade I was named managing editor of our classroom newspaper, and ever since I’ve been working with words. Here i am writing about career.